Rolando Santana’s take on the Perspex-Tive trend
showcases strong, powerful and beautiful girls with a
futuristic feel.

Marras’ take on the Au-Currant trend, a take on modern art
that is paler skin, flashes of metallic through the eye keep it
modern with heart-shaped lips. Strength on top and soft on
the bottom, set against matte skin. PHOTOS: MAC

For spring and summer, the makeup focus was beautifully minimalist, but for the cooler days of fall and winter, beauty trends run the gamut from moody, to mysterious, to dare I say it – haunting. The trend has pushed away from pretty and allows people to showcase their rebellious side. It’s about attitude, fierceness and imperfection on purpose.

MAC’s fall and winter trend is makeup that is angular, artistic and unfinished. It’s all about celebrating the imperfections. The makeup is beautifully flawed.

“Makeup for the fall and winter is more straightforward … more moody, more mysterious and layered with feeling,” said MAC Senior Makeup Artist Gisel Calvillo. “It’s makeup with life, resonant with elements of the past, present and future.”

There is a beautiful tension and duality – hard meets soft, proper is mixed with the perverse, the past collides with the future, punk rebellion is injected into femininity, strength is cut with fragility, organic is juxtaposed against synthetic, innocence is haunted with something unhinged … grunge becomes a synonym for glamour.

The trends speak to the Reb-Elle, Spiritual Eyes, Au-Currant and Perspex-Tive. This season is all about experimenting with makeup and shaking up your routine, as your look really does not have to be perfect. It’s a sense of something that has to be undone. Placement has no bounds. Finish does not respect the old rules of perfection. Colors are twisted with unexpected undertones and textures from organic matte to plasticized gloss.

What feels contemporary now is less made up, and more made down (both in terms of mood and the lived-in finish).

Reb-Elle: Pure dead black. Black meets charcoal meets emerald meets burgundy meets midnight blue. Liner and shadow have dropped any sense of sexy smokiness and picked up a rebellious streak that is unconventional. It’s anti-glamour and attitude driven. It’s hollow, etched, destroyed, unfinished. The significant black eye nods back to punk in spirit, and points to the future in terms of its synthetic texture.

This season it’s all about dark romanticism and celebrating the dark side of glamour.

“It’s either very structured eye or aerodynamic with the liner effect,” said Calvillo. It’s that structured look or what you would do in the car when you had a minute-and-a-half and had no brushes and you do it with your fingers. It’s punk grunge. It’s that beautiful more elite eye. It’s structured, beautiful and blended. You want that messy look. It’s a trend that can translate to every woman on the street, and not something that’s too hard to achieve. More about structure being on the corner of the eye and giving it that almond shape kind of sexy eye and then smudged on the bottom.”

Spiritual-Eyes: Tired, spooky, haunted… Beauty has descended into an ethereally wistful mood, characterized by brooding shadowed eyes and constituted with clouds of grayed tones. These eyes are emotively shaded and not sensually smoked and even more moving for their emergence from a porcelain skin. Think cold color — steel, cement, asphalt, slate, aluminum, lead against alabaster skin.

“It’s 40s/50s glamour meets grunge,” said Calvillo. “Color spoken in a whisper. A soft, cool palate of colors, so think of your color and maybe adding a tinge of blue to it to make it cool and rigid like.”

The woman who will wear this trend is a pretty Tim Burton girl… gothic, but pretty. She plays with color to make a statement on the face that contrasts with the monochromatic collection. The makeup is not static. It has movement and light.

“It’s about embracing your inner beauty and having a fashion twist to it with your own story but with your own signature — a mystical woman, a ghostly woman, so think about the grays, silvers and that palate that’s a little bit colder, a bit haunted meaning that the colors are colder and tell that whimsical story in a beautiful way,” said Calvillo. It’s about accenting the brow and elongating it and that’s pretty much the entire makeup, so it’s more of a brow story. Perfect skin. It looks like you’re wearing a bunch of nothing, but a bunch of nothing still takes a lot of time because they’re actually the hardest looks to achieve. In this look you’re just sweeping a soft gray underneath the eye.”

The essentials

Paint Pot in Stormy Pink: Sheer it down with Fast Response Eye Cream to create the perfect eye stain.

Paint Pot in Groundwork: Swooped around upper and lower lids with a 188 small duo fiber brush for a real shadow.

Lip Mix in Medium Nude: For a photographic stain around the eye.

Au-Currant: Undone but well done. The unanimous proposal for a colored heart-shaped lip this season is red. The new take on crimson is underpinned with an intimation of mystery, melancholy and the macabre. Whether that comes wrapped in the guise of a beguiling blurry Bordeaux, or a glossy volt of cranberry. Set against a pallid complexion, the look captures a mesmerizing beauty. It’s Gothicism in its truest most poetic sense.

“This is a really beautiful way of doing a modern lip, and it’s something everybody can wear as well,” said Calvillo. “It’s that rush of blood — any form of red… ruby, burgundy, intense red and all of that is going on the lip. The eyes are very soft and contoured.”

If you have large lips, accentuate them and you will be Au-Currant, because it’s about embracing your inner and outer beauty and adding a fashion twist to it, with your own signature.

The essentials

Fall 13 Lip Palatte in a rich new mood and a red statement: Blended and buffed on; applicable to lips and cheeks.

Lipmix in Crimson: For the matte, intensely pigmented mouth.

Lip Pencil in Nightmoth: Focus it on the inner edges of the mouth.

Cremesheen Lipstick in Hang Up: Just Bitten Lips.

Perspex-Tive: Catch the light. This trend focuses on how skin picks up the light. Makeup is seen through a veil of skincare for a blank canvas. It’s a new way of revisiting the monochrome effect. It’s a beautiful wash of skin that is dewy, a whimsical look that everyone would love to have. It’s pure, fresh natural beauties. The look is a healthy, fresh glow with a quirky edge.”

“It’s sporty, cool and effortless – a synthetic kind of glow to the skin,” said Calvillo. “It’s the cellophane eye and the Caribbean trend. You don’t even need any gloss; you just go to the Caribbean and you have this beautiful white glow on your skin. On a lighter skin, silvers look great; on a deeper skin tone, gold looks beautiful. It’s minimalistic but still has a striking approach.”